Archive August 6, 2025

On Wednesday, August 6, 2018, this is how things are going.

Fighting

• According to regional governor Oleh Syniehubov, the forces of Russian aggression attacked six Kharkiv-area settlements, killing three people and injuring ten in Lyman and Vovchansk.
• A duty mechanic was killed when Russian forces shelled a Lozova railway station. Ten people were injured, according to Syniehubov, including four other railroad workers.
• Four people were killed and three others were hurt in the 431 airstrikes that Russia carried out on 16 settlements in the Zaporizhia region of Ukraine, according to Governor Ivan Fedorov.
• According to Leonid Pasechnik, the region’s newly installed governor, four Ukrainian drones were killed in the district of Svatovsky in the Russian-occupied Luhansk region. A fifth worker injured in the strike had later passed away in a hospital, according to the head of the region’s health service, according to a statement from Russia’s state-run TASS news agency.

• A 30-year-old man was killed and a 51-year-old woman was hurt on Monday in the Svatovsky district of the Svatovsky district when a Ukrainian drone attacked a car.
• In a failed attack on Ukraine’s Sumy region, according to Ukrainian military intelligence, 334 Russian soldiers were killed and more than 550 were hurt in Ukraine. The report couldn’t be verified by Al Jazeera.
• Andriy Yermak, the country’s top official in Ukraine, claimed on Telegram that Kyiv had discovered Indian components in Russian drones used to attack Ukraine. Al Jazeera was unable to independently verify the information.

military assistance

• The Norwegian government announced in a statement that Sweden, Norway, and Denmark will contribute about 5 billion Norwegian crowns ($486.16) to the purchase of US weapons for Ukraine.
• Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, acknowledged the funding and claimed that the country had received “a further $500 million from our friends in Northern Europe: Sweden, Norway, and Denmark” for US weapons.
• According to the Pentagon, the US Department of State approved the potential sale of M777 Howitzer artillery guns, transportation, and consolidation services to Ukraine from BAE Systems and other US contractors for an estimated $ 203.5 million.

Regional security

• In response to a Polish request, the German air force will station five Eurofighter combat aircraft in Poland for a number of weeks, according to a spokesman for the air force. According to the Kyiv Independent news outlet, the move was used to deter joint Russian-Belarusian military exercises.
• After two military drones entered Lithuania’s territory from Belarus last month, the country’s ministry of foreign affairs wrote to the NATO military alliance in a letter.

Sanctions and the ceasefire

• Zelenskyy claimed to have a “productive conversation” with US President Donald Trump, “with the main goal of course being to end the war.”
• Trump claimed on CNBC that Russian President Vladimir Putin might be forced to put an end to Russia’s conflict in Ukraine due to falling energy prices.
• Trump said that if the energy levels drop, Putin will stop killing people. He’s going to have no other choice because his economy is in trouble if you get your energy down, or even $10 per barrel.

In a recent congressional vote, Petro claimed that Peru had “unilaterally” asserted control over the small island of Santa Rosa in a social media post on Tuesday.

On the social media platform X, Petro wrote, “The Peruvian government has just taken it by law.”

He added that Peru’s actions could prevent Leticia, a city in Colombia, from gaining access to the Amazon River. To defend our nation’s sovereignty, our government will use diplomatic means.

Petro’s remarks appeared to be in response to a vote in June that gave the island of Santa Rosa&nbsp, a district in its Loreto province, its name.

Peru and Colombia have debated who controls the island for almost a century.

Treaties from 1922 and 1929, which Peru signed, have affirmed ownership of Santa Rosa for decades.

However, Colombia maintains that the Santa Rosa island was not a part of the Amazon River at the time the treaties were signed and is therefore unaffected by them.

Additionally, it has been claimed that the treaties established a border between Colombia and the two nations at the deepest point along the Amazon River and that islands like Santa Rosa have grown up along the same dividing line.

The Peruvian government has simply taken the land that has appeared north of the current deepest line and placed Colombia’s capital on the land that, according to Petro, should have owned by the treaty.

He warned that the claims made by Peru to Santa Rosa could stifle trade and travel to nearby Leticia, which has a population of nearly 60 000.

Leticia could disappear as an Amazonian port, according to Petro’s statement on Tuesday, “which could lead to this unilateral action.”

On Thursday, Petro announced that he would hold celebrations in Leticia to mark Colombia’s declaration of its independence from Spain.

In a social media post, the Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that it would push for more diplomatic means of determining the islands’ nationality.

Colombia has argued for years that bilateral work is necessary to be done in order to allocate islands, according to the ministry. The statement continued that Colombia “has reiterated the fact that Santa Rosa Island has not been given to Peru.”

The Amazon River has the most water discharged of any river, making it one of the longest in the world.

However, the river basin’s powerful currents deposit and rearrange sediment, creating islands and occasionally erasing them.

One of those younger islands is Santa Rosa. The village of Santa Rosa de Yavari, as well as the forest and farmland that surround the property, are now there.

According to Peru’s most recent census, the town has fewer than 1, 000 residents, and is largely dependent on tourism because of its close proximity to the Amazon.

Santa Rosa was designated as a district by the Peruvian government to ensure that it received federal funding and authority to collect taxes.

Trump said he is focused on getting “people fed” in Gaza when asked about rumors that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has occupied the entire Palestinian territory on Tuesday.

“I really can’t say how the rest of it is,” she said. The US president told reporters that that will largely depend on Israel.

Washington annually provides Israel with billions of dollars in military aid, an amount that dramatically increased since Israel’s occupation of Gaza in October 2023.

Gaza’s 86 percent of the territory has been militarized because of forced displacement orders Israel has issued to force Palestinians into ever-shrinking pockets.

However, more military engagements in the area’s remaining areas would put Palestinians at risk even more, since they already endure daily bombardment and Israeli-imposed starvation.

Concerns are also raised by Netanyahu’s alleged plans to conquer Gaza by Hamas and other Palestinian organizations regarding the safety of the remaining Israeli prisoners confined there.

A complete occupation of Gaza, according to Miroslav Jenca, a top UN official, “risks catastrophic consequences” on Tuesday.

“The scope of international law is clear. According to Jenca, Gaza will continue to be a key component of the upcoming Palestinian state.

In 2005, Israel withdrew its forces and colonies from the Palestinian territory, but legal experts claimed that the area remained technically under Israeli occupation because Gaza’s airspace, territorial waters, and ports of entry were still under Israeli control.

Right-wing Israeli officials have demanded that Israel’s military presence and settlements be reinstated in Gaza since the start of the conflict in 2023.

Trump himself echoed Netanyahu’s suggestion in February that Israel plans to remove all Palestinians from the region, which would be considered ethnic cleansing.

Trump at the time suggested removing its citizens from Gaza in order to build a “riviera of the Middle East” there.

In response to growing international outcry over the deadly hunger that is roiling the area, there have recently been reports about Israel’s plans to expand its ground operations in Gaza.

Since March, Israel has made Gaza almost exclusively a place where Palestinians can get food thanks to US-backed GHF sites.

Israel’s military has shot hundreds of Palestinians as they attempt to access GHF facilities close to Israel’s borders of control. Despite international pleas for the UN to give the aid, the US has remained committed to supporting the organization.

Israel has recently allowed some food trucks and airdrops to deliver aid to Gaza, but the aid is still far from meeting the population’s needs.

In northern Gaza, the Israeli military is also accused of attempting to drive aid trucks away from GHF sites.

Trump’s frequently repeated claim that the US has given Gaza $60 million was reiterated on Tuesday. His administration had given GHF $ 30 million.

According to him, “As you know, $60 million was recently provided by the United States to provide food for the people of Gaza, which are obviously not doing well with the food,” he told reporters.

“And I am aware that Israel will provide for that in terms of both money and distribution. In terms of the money and possible distribution, we also have the Arab states [who] are going to assist us in that].